Alcolog

It's important to shop for alcohol when you're traveling. From a pragmatic perspective, it exposes you to some things that might not be available in your home town. It also helps compare prices between what you're used to and what people pay for elsewhere. From a romantic perspective, even a mediocre find can have a level of nostalgia associated with drinking it. The drink becomes a way to reconnect with a memory of a place and time in your life.

But this purchase comes with some pitfalls if you're flying domestically in the USA. The first critical issue is that, as of September 2006, you cannot carry any alcohol on a plane in a container larger than a mini-bottle. To be precise, the limit is three fluid ounces which translates to 88 mililiters. You might be able to carry a flask on board but if you're buying liquor on the road it's not something you'll want to parcel into 3oz opaque flasks. You may also encounter an over-eager TSA employee who wants to enforce the local jurisdiction's open container law. So until the ban on fluids is lifted, you're left to packing the alcohol in your checked baggage.

If this gives you pause, you're not alone. I have seen the horrors of cases of wine destroyed in transit when people check those cases. Packing is a critical function of checking alcohol and must be done in a way that limits the chance that bottles will break. Consider buying some "expendible" bottles before making a habit of checking alcohol.

Then you run into Chapter 49 of the Code of Federal Regulations, section 175.10. Knowing this section is vital to the protection of your cargo. Violating this regulation may lead to the confiscation or disposal of your alcohol. Yes, the TSA will toss a $300 bottle of Scotch into the trash because someone went over the limit. They don't care, they don't have to -- they're the government.

Learn and swear by these basic rules:

(a) This subchapter does not apply to the following hazardous 
materials when carried by aircraft passengers or crewmembers provided 
the requirements of this section are met:
    (4) Alcoholic beverages containing:
    (i) Not more than 24% alcohol by volume; or
    (ii) More than 24% and not more than 70% alcohol by volume when in 
unopened retail packagings not exceeding 5 liters (1.3 gallons) carried 
in carry-on or checked baggage, with a total net quantity per person of 
5 liters (1.3) gallons for such beverages.

What this means is that anything below 24% alcohol by volume (48 proof) is free game. If you're between 24% and 70% abv (48 and 140 proof) you're limited to 5 liters. Anything over 70% abv (140 proof) is prohibited. Bacardi 151? Banned. George T. Stagg cask strength? Not allowed. Everclear? You'll probably end up on the "persons of interest" list. Most distilled spirits fall in the 40-50% abv range and bottle at 750ml. To be safe, don't go over six 750ml bottles of distilled spirits.

These limitations do not apply to surface transportation. Train, bus, or car and you'll be fine. I've been fortunate in the last few months that my travel has been by car. The bounties of those trips will be the subject of tomorrow's post - bootlegging in the 21st century.

Tasting parties are truly enriching experiences. At a social level, it represents a group of friends (or soon-to-be-friends) gathering around a kind of alcohol to talk about it and the other experiences that come to mind while tasting it. Educationally speaking, each palate can catch various flavors or descriptors and the rest of the group might try to pin down those tastes themselves. And, of course, there's the alcohol. Typically threaded together in some kind of theme that the host chooses; the theme of the tasting is a path, preferably one that leads to a deeper understanding of alcohol.
Last night's tasting was themed around Laphroaig. There were seven expressions, five from the distillery and two from Signatory. I won't go into the various tastes of any of them (I'm not much of a note-taker in that regard), but if you've had Laphroaig at all you'll know its house style is, well, iodine. It's more respectable to call it "phenol" but that's just a technical term. Essentially all five of the original bottlings held true to the house style, but the Signatories were less so. The seven year actually tasted more like a non-Lahproaig Islay malt. The 14-year Signatory tasted more like Laphroaig, but had more Speyside-y tones.
Interestingly enough the 10-year cask strength had a lower alcohol content than the 14-year that was also cask strength. This was likely due to a few factors like the 10-year was aged on Islay whereas the Signatory was likely aged in Edinburgh under stable conditions. The other consideration would be that the 10-year could have been a vatted from older barrels whose cask proof was lower. In other words - just because it's cask strength doesn't mean it's single barrel.
The consensus opinion came out that the 30-year was the best tasting, though the 14-year Signatory was the best high-end deal and the 10-year cask strength is the best cheap deal. The reasoning: water breaks down Laphroaig in bad ways.

Today served as a confirmation of some fears I've had about the liquor industry's future; at least as it impacts people's pocketbooks. Economists call it "wholesale inflation" but that's just an easy way to explain why it'll cost more money to make money. What that means for the average consumer will be generally higher prices for alcohol, with some sectors seeing larger prices dependent on their core costs.
The most core cost of all is oil. Oil spans all layers of the liquor industry, from the heating of the stills to the trucks and planes that get that bottle in your hands. Oil's not getting any cheaper these days, and companies are realizing that they can no longer "eat" the cost of oil to keep prices lower. The end result will be an increase in price for all forms of liquor regardless of their area.
The second part of inflation deals with the weakness of the US dollar to the Euro. Right now one Euro will cost you 1.30 in US Dollars. Five years ago a euro cost less than a dollar. In 2004, the Euro stabilized at around its current price and importers are starting to realize that the dollar will not drop anytime soon. As a result you'll see higher prices on anything originating from Europe: Scotch and Irish whiskies, gin, grappa, imported vodka, and most liqueurs. French wines and non-domestic beers won't suffer the same increases for reasons I'll explain later.
Whereas oil does not end up in the final product you drink, some raw ingredients are necessary in the production of alcohol... like corn (maize for the non-US folks). America is converting massive quantities of corn into ethanol these days. The problem for the liquor industry is that we aren't drinking all of it - a lot of it ends up in our cars. This is increasing the core cost of corn and affecting prices on everything from Coca-Cola to tortillas in Mexico. This relative scarcity of corn will lead to price increases in any distilled spirits involving corn, and in the US that's Bourbon. Fortunately that cost impact is slightly delayed since the direct cost won't show up for another few years. Bourbon has to age so the high-cost white lightning coming off those stills today has to mellow in some oak for a few years before we'll get the sticker shock. However, distilleries will try to defray production costs today in the bottles they're shipping now. The result is slightly costlier bottles now for less of a sticker shock in a few years. Regardless, it means higher prices even for your domestic whiskey. So if you were hoping to avoid a weak dollar's impact on your booze; Bourbon is not your savior.
There's also a double impact in Scotch beyond the exchange rate. Most Scotch bottled today has age statements that place it in the early 1990s. That is to say that a bottle of Macallan 12 is made from casks filled in 1994. In general, the early 1990s were a horrible time for Scotch with many distilleries closing and the remaining ones selling off their stock to make ends meet. Now in 2007 these distilleries have a low level of stock and therefore an increased scarcity of product necessary to bottle their Scotch today.

Depressed yet? It's not all doom and gloom. The best estimate of distilled product inflation this year will be around 5%. That's steep compared to the last few years, but pretty tame if you normalize it over the last decade. A kind ecomonmist might call it a "market correction".
There are some markets that will not see price rises because of mitigating factors. The biggest example of this is in the French wine industry. France is at a loss for what to do this its fermented grapes. They're distilling it and selling it as vodka (Ciroc, Idol) and turning into a fuel additive. Now would be an excellent time to pick up a French wine habit because prices will be depressed for a while until France comes up with a better way to handle their production. An ancillary benefactor to this problem will be the grape-based vodkas coming from France since this will be a cheap way for France to offload its wine surplus.
Unlike their distilled counterparts, most non-domestic beers are fermented and bottled domestically. The cost-benefit for importing finished bottles of beer just doesn't make sense for the beer market. The result is domestically produced "imports". These are less likely to suffer from cost inflation due to currency valuations. That pint of Guinness will stay pretty low because it's being produced in America.
Price will also boost the fortunes of the domestic microdistillery movement. American produced vodkas and ryes will benefit from their imported/corn based competition's price pressures.
Also expect that rum and tequila prices will be favorable compared to the whiskies. The Mexican Peso and other western hemisphere currencies are stable compared to the US Dollar. That, coupled with shorter distance to market, will yield favorable prices for these products in America. The one exception I would see to this would be in Brazillian Cachaça since Brazil's economy relies on cheap ethanol produced from cane sugar to fuel its automobiles in a similar fahion to America's dependence on corn-based ethanol to fuel its own cars.
In short, expect 2007 to have some more expensive alcohols regardless of their quality and demand. There will be bargains in some sectors, but you will need to shop around to find them. My advice would be to pick up a white spirits habit because it will be a cheap fallback for a while.

It's been a week since WhiskyFest, which gave me enough time to digest the evening's experiences and reflect on a few high notes from the evening.

Local law in Chicago limited the amount of alcohol that can be poured per taste to one quarter of a shot (about 11ml). This meant that, for the five hours of WhiskyFest, one could consume twenty tastes and stay within the oft-quoted limit of one drink per hour. Those twenty prized tastes had to be drawn from over 250 different options. Tough choices, too. Some stuck to expensive Scotches, while others tried the obscure domestic options. Some threw the twenty-drink rule to the wind and got kicked out. My rule? Drink what I can't get back home. This ranged from a Suntory only available in Japan, a blended Scotch only available in the eastern time zone, a Colorado whiskey, and a few IB Scotches. Throw in a few ryes and Bourbons and I'm pretty sure I stayed under the limit.

The notable winners were the ryes, numerous and popular at the show. Templeton made their out-of-Iowa debut at the show and drew an amazing crowd. Kentucky Bourbon Distiller's offered up some very spicy and aged ryes that caught the eye of a few. WhiskyFest even gave its first speaking engagement to Craig Beam to talk about rye's upsurge.

Diageo's presence at the show was unmistakeable. When going through the doors, the tier of booths in front of everyone were Diageo's brands: Singleton, Bulleit, Dickel, Johnnie Walker, Talisker, and Bushmills. This powerhouse of distilling ensured that people tried their products, in a way that felt more like a carnival than a collection of whisky drinkers. Considering that they were one of the premier sponsors for the show, it's hard to blame them for wanting people to try their products.

Slightly related to that is a small maxim: If you need scantility clad women to draw people to your booth, then your product isn't selling itself on its own merits. The hall had numerous women in slinky cocktail dresses mingling with men looking for attention and being towards a specific company's offerings. This kind of marketing, while effective, does not improve the industry's standing as a male-oriented experience. To be blunt: WhiskyFest had less women there of their own volition than the computer hacking convention I went to in 1999. Plenty of dates and wives, but the industry has yet to crack the gender barrier. Whisky needs to draw in more women in order to be more viable in the future.

The Distilled Sprits Council has a horrible job. This political action committee has the charge of convincing the puritanical American interests that alcohol isn't a bad thing. At this point that means picking narrow interests like fighting silly blue laws and educating teenagers that they shouldn't drink. More broad subjects like convincing people that alcohol isn't a bad thing have to take a backseat because the audience of America doesn't agree.
One small aside: it was rather funny to find out that Chistopher Buckley spent time at the Distilled Spirits Council while writing his book, Thank You For Smoking.

One last observation: WhiskyFest is a lot like Mardi Gras. There's a lot of things that happen the week leading up to the actual holiday and if you aren't around for anything but the last day; then you're missing a lot. The week leading up to WhiskyFest had a number of events that were more intereting and more accessible than the event itself. So for next year I'll be there for more than just the event itself. Maybe next year I'll get more than just twenty tastes of the leading edge of the whisky industry.

It took about twenty minutes for me to realize that I was not the primary audience of last night's party. There was a Jameson event called The Bartenders Ball, and I tagged along with a friend for the evening. The offerings for the night started as just Jameson but then expanded to Stoli, Beefeater, Chivas, Wild Turkey, and Kahlua after midnight.

"Oh. Pernod."

The evening was an attempt to promote Pernod Ricard's key brands to the influential members of the hospitality industry. I'm not sure how necessary that was, since Jameson is the preferred spirit of the hipster class in Minneapolis. Irish whiskey in general does nicely in this market, heavily marketed by the local Irish pubs like O'Gara's and the Kieran family's bars. This weekend managed to clean out Zipp's liquor store of Jameson, Powers, and Bushmills. Those first two are the primary staples of Pernod Ricard's Irish offerings.

Pernod isn't just marketing Jameson these days. In their "white spritis" area, there's a three-pronged marketing of their top brands. Stolichnaya is reconnecting with its Russian roots by opening a faux Stoli Hotel in Los Angeles. Nobody can sleep there, but they can admire the architecture and connect Stoli the drink with the Hotel Moskva that's pictured on its label. Beefeater, the quintessential English gin, is getting a makeover to reconnect that drink with its London roots. The ad campaign and new packaging are hoping to make it less about the gin and more about the place. The third white spirit, Havana Club, is getting its own inadvertent boost from the courts of justice and public opinion. Bacardi's drive to displace Pernod's Havana Club is only drawing more non-US drinkers to the Pernod version. To extend upon an aphorism; Bacardi gave Pernod the lemons, then had to take them back to make the lemonade for Pernod to drink.

Pernod's Scotches are doing quite nicely as well. Their top-line single malt (Glenlivet) and blend (Chivas) are brand staples in their markets, so Pernod is pushing lesser known Scotches in their portfolio. Ballantines received its own makeover earlier this year and a multi-media advertising push in a few markets. Pernod is hoping to improve people's opinion of the blended Scotch it acquired from Allied Domeq in 2005. Their single malt Scotch Longmorn is slated for a redesign and a marketing push to make it an equal to Glenlivet's success.

So what does an alcologger do at a party designed for bartenders? Enjoy the music, mingle a little, and think about how much cold hard cash fills the marketing budgets of the big drinks companies.

Of those countries that have a holiday to celebrate paternity, the plurality of them celebrate it on the third Sunday in June. In other words, five days from today. But the dull roar of merchants suggesting gift ideas for "Dads and Grads" pretty much started the Monday after Mother's Day. The drinks industry, whose laser-like focus on males as the only half of the species that drinks, has ponied up many suggestions on what to give your dad this year.
Not wanting to feel left out, I decided that there should be an Alcolog gifting idea for dads. I promise to offer up similar suggestions next May for the mother that bucks the trend and enjoys a drink; but shy of backdating a post, I can't really offer that for Mother's Day 2007.

So the first suggestion to help figure out what to get dad is to actually look in his liquor cabinet. Are the bottles fresh? Fancy? Does it look like your dad buys stuff because of the shape of the bottle or the color of the liquid? Father's Day gifts that don't match your father's taste are likely to be re-gifted or given away at the next party. Get your dad something he'll drink.

Second, get something that you'll both drink. Part of the pleasure of giving someone alcohol is that they're probably going to open it and offer you some. Even if you finish it that night, the experience of the evening and the enjoyment of the gift is what matters. If you want to give your dad a gift that sits on a shelf, go with something safe like ties or underwear.

So armed with taste, the next big step is plunging into the local liquor store's collection and finding something. Walk through the entire store and try to match areas with the bottles you saw on the shelf. If your dad's bottles had labels peeling off and imperial volume measurements, it's better to ask for help from a manager. Preferably one who was drinking before 1980.

Liquor stores are smart in that they classify their selections fairly nicely. If you find all of your dad's bottles in the same basic shelving area, good money says that the bottles on those same shelves will probably be cool for him. Even if he opens the gift and he says, "Oh man, I can't drink this because of a college party in 1965..." he might try it again and revisit those days with you.

Next big tip: you've located his bottles, so now you tilt your head up one or two shelves. Those are your gifts for dad. They'll be more expensive, but it's a special occasion courtesy of Dick Nixon, so you might as well celebrate it.

So what if you don't have the time to do the pre-work and you're not sure what your dad likes? Go generic and get bar tools. A corkscrew or hipflask are good bets. Just don't guess - alcohol is a consumable gift, and the last thing you want to do is sift through your late father's worldly belongings to find the unopened bottle, label peeling, and contents undrinkable because it sat on a shelf for decades.

From a scientific standpoint, it's actually a bit sloppy to say that liquor is a drinkable form of alcohol. When referring to liquor, the alcohol is actually ethanol: one of the simplest and most common forms of alcohol. Pure ethanol is some pretty nasty stuff, having a flash point at 13C (55F). For comparison, diesel's flash point is around 62C (162F). You can understand why alcohol is used a propellant and fuel for vehicles.

But that bottle in the liquor cabinet is not likely to spontaneously combust if you're smoking around it, nor is it going to work as a pricy alternative to your car's gasoline. There are exceptions to that rule, and these are the liquors that could be called the Hazmat (Hazardous Materials) category.

The king, weighing in at 95% abv, is Everclear. This really isn't meant to be drank straight and is really a mixer for non-alcoholic drinks or making liquors. I keep a large bottle on hand as a food-grade disinfectant, emergency fuel source, and once used as a topical analgesic for a toothache. To give you an idea of how potent Everclear is: It takes one cup (240ml) of Everclear substituted in for a portion of the water in a standard grape Kool-Aid recipe in order to make a punch with the same average potency as wine.

Why isn't there something above 95% abv? Alcohol is hygroscopic, which is to say that at percentages above 95% it will absorb humidity from the air in order to reach equilibrium at 95% abv.

Everclear has a quaint Irish cousin, known as Poitín or Potcheen. Historically, it's an Irish moonshine but has recently been commercially bottled. The bottlings vary from 40% up to 90%, with the "good stuff" being well above 60%. This is actually meant to be consumed, though the most potent I've had has weighed in at 55%. It's hard to get ahold of the high-end stuff because it's so potent.

Moving into the range of stuff with flavor, high-proof rums end to float in the 70-85% range. The most famous rum in this range is Bacardi 151. If you ever see a flaming drink in a bar, this is probably the propellant used for the show. The less famous rums are commonly toted home by Caribbean cruisers, possibly to be confiscated by righteous customs and TSA agents. Remember folks: If you're going to blow a few grand to spend a week on a ship - have the forethought to know how to get your rum booty back home.
One high-proof rum of note is Austria's line of Stroh rums. I've got a bottle of the 80% stuff and it's quite nice. I especially like the pinkish tone that you'd associate with gasoline.

Whiskies have their dominant contributor to the hazmat category: barrel proof Bourbons. Buffalo Trace's George T. Stagg is the most common example of this having their 15-year old weighing in near 70% abv every year. More commonly found is Jim Beam's Booker's which is around 60-63%. This is relatively closer to the high-end of Bourbon's popular range of 43-53.5% abv.

Scotch has its own contributor to this range, but is not yet available. Bruichladdich announced they distilled a spirit at 92% abv and is to be called "X4". What its proof will be once it gets out of the cask is anybody's guess. As mentioned before, Scotch's potency diminshes with age, so a few years (three years minimum) in an oak cask is likely to do a number on the spirit. It should still weigh in well above the 70% range allowed on a plane.

The requisite warning with all of these drinks is to heed caution: they aren't your run of the mill drinks. If you drink them straight keep them limited to tastes and don't consume them like they were a shot of vodka or a Tequila chaser. But if you pause, taste, and relish in these high end proofs you'll experience both sides of the thin line separating liquor from perfume. These are aromas to be taken in by the nose... not the gullet.

Whereas there are exceptions in beers and a common traits in wine, liquor as a universal truth, does not improve once placed in a bottle. The contents, at best, can stay the same as once they're bottled. But as mentioned before, distilled liquor can suffer some bad effects once it's put in the bottle. But in some contexts, that static nature of liquor can be a good thing. Especially when proper storage and care is performed on the aging bottle.

In some context, a bottle of liquor is a time capsule. Not just in the label, but the contents themselves. Once a liquor is bottled it becomes a point on a timeline. That bottle will remain static but the world around it will change. Countries change their names, distilleries close, and copyrights change hands. But that bottle, and the label on it, will never change.

This phenomenon is the glory of the astute liquor buyer (either at the wholesale or retail level) because they can come across some rare finds when shopping around. Months ago I came across a local liquor store with some curiously old bottles. I didn't buy them at the time, but their presence gnawed at me until I stopped by and bought a few bottles. Only after I got them home did the age of the bottles really set in.

The first, most common, was Buchanan's Black & White Belended Scotch Whisky. This is still available and is probably unchanged, but it's not really sold in the US anymore. Once the merger that formed Diageo happened in 1997, Black and White was one of the casualties of the merger. It's still available in France, Venezuela, and Brazil. But none is shipped to North America anymore. Any bottles found are likely holdovers from the days when the brand was owned by United Distillers. The way to be sure is to look at the name of the importer.

The second, most interesting, was the Glenfiddich Special Reserve Pure Malt/Single Malt. This bottling pre-dates the Cardow/Cardhu debacle of 2003 that tainted "pure malt" forever. Instead this harkens back to a time, again in the late 1990s, when Scotch was finding its footing in the drinking culture. Back then it was more important to distinguish between blends and malts than to specify ages or the origin from a single distillery. So this bottle is the progenitor of the Glenfiddich 12 - the staple of the William Grant line of single malts. What makes it very interesting is that its taste profile is notably different from the modern Glenfiddich. It's more buttery/marshmallowy than modern Glenfiddich. Possibly a sign of changing times, or at least the maturation/aging of a master blender's taste.

The last bottle, and possibly the most special of the set, is a Black Bull Blended Scotch Whisky. This also dates from the late 90s, isn't likely to ever come back. A few years after this was bottled, a sprightly Austrian company called "Red Bull" contested the trademark in the US. The local importer at the time was either out of business or in no position to contend it, so the trademark went inactive in 2002. Red Bull trademarked "Black Bull" but only for non-alcoholic drinks. Later, the new owner of the brand, registered it in the US but did not start bringing the brand back. Later, a US company started marketing a "Black Bull Vodka" and so the chance we'll ever see the Black Bull Scotch in the US any time soon is quite slim. End result? The bottle I'm holding on to now will be part of a dwindling stock of Black Bull in the US - unlikely to be refreshed and definitely will never be the same.

An epilogue: This moment of clarity would not be possible for two very important players. The first was a diligent liquor manager at the store, ensuring that these bottles did not suffer the same fate as the All Saints brands. These were well preserved specimens of history.
Second, I would like to thank these bottlers of the late 90s for having the foresight to use screwcap closures because they avoided the fright of cork taint. Sure cork is a romantic closure - but it sure isn't a long-lived one. stryrofoam barriers and plastic/metal screwcaps preserved these beautiful bottles for nearly a decade. Had they been cork, I'd expect that the bottles would be worthless today.

For those in the know, WhiskyFest Chicago took place last Friday night, and I've been in Chicago for the last week attending various events and tastings leading up to the event. It's been a long week of scribbling notes, taking pictures, and chatting with friends (both old and new). Oh, and drinking. Lots of drinking. My mind is still sorting through approximately 100 new spirits... including a cognac. Not sure how that one slipped in there.

I gathered up a lot of topics that I'd like to focus on in the coming weeks. This week helped me remember why this weblog is out here: to fill in the missing gaps of information about alcohol. Some of it's a bit esoteric, while other parts are mundane. But one of the magical things about the Internet is that you can focus on the stuff that's interesting and skip over the boring parts.

In closing, I want to thank everyone who helped make WhiskyFest Chicago possible. The drinking public is enriched by your efforts, and the non-drinking public doesn't know what they're missing. So to Amy, Marty, Mike, John, Brian, Gregor, Ray, Mike, Derek, and did I forget a Mike? There were a lot of Mikes... Thank you all!